: : Yes, to some people 1969 was the highwater mark for the cultural change that swept the US that started, some say, in 1964 or so.
: : Woodstock and the Altamont killing were aspects and a mirror image of this time.

: I agree.

: On the Snopes urban legend site, I found some general information about the song's meaning -- http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/hotel.htm "In a 1995 interview, Don Henley said the song 'sort of captured the zeitgeist of the time, which was a time of great excess in this country and in the music business in particular.' In another interview that same year, he referred to it as being about a 'loss of innocence.' The album has as its underlying theme the corruption of impressionable rock stars by the decadent Los Angeles music industry. The celebrated title track presents California as a gilded prison the artist freely enters only to discover that he cannot later escape. The real Hotel California is not a place; it is a metaphor for the west coast music industry and its effect on the talented but unworldy musicians who find themselves ensnared in its glittering web.

: From online information about events of 1969:

: In spite of peace talks, U.S. forces in Vietnam peaked at 543,400 in April. Withdrawal from Vietnam began in July

: U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first human to walk on the moon

: First Woodstock Festival draws 500,000-plus people to small New York town

: Anti-war demonstrations sweep nation, centered on college campuses

: 250,000 march on Washington to protest the Vietnam conflict

: Stonewall Riot in New York City marks start of gay rights movement

: A Rolling Stones fan is killed at the group's Altamont, California, concert by members of Hell's Angels.

:::: Sorry to ruin a good story here guys, but I once heard an interview with the Eagles where all these questions were asked, and they laughed and said that people always analyse this stuff, but there's nothing too analyse. They said, that their songs, and not just this one, were pretty much put together in a sort of scrap book fashion, made up of bits of stuff they'd heard or seen at different times, that meant nothing to them, but the words sounded good and they liked they way they stuck together (their words not mine).

And most of all they loved the fact that people analysed their words, applying deep and meaningful definitions, when in actual fact there was nothing deep and meaningful at all. They seemed to think this was all very funny.

These are not my words. This was a live interview, and yes, it might have been rigged, I have no proof, but I doubt it. Methinks, sometimes we take things, and probably ourselves, a bit too seriously. And me, also thinks (poetic license) that sometimes we look too deeply and too hard for meanings where they don't really exist.